


Haunted, Part 2

by AWomanOfLetters



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Letter H, Writing Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 16:23:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4269996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AWomanOfLetters/pseuds/AWomanOfLetters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean help Jen put her ghost to rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunted, Part 2

Jen paced back and forth before her townhouse's front door, wringing her hands nervously. She hadn't been back home since that night; Bree had made her stay at her house until things got straightened away.

"Straightened away". Like this was some sort of small mess, the kind you could clean up with Windex and paper towels. Even though it was a typical inland summer day, blazingly hot, with the sun beating down, she shivered and hugged her shoulders. It was only because Bree had been there, had seen and heard the same things she had, that she was keeping a tight hold of her sanity. 

Also, the fact that she hadn't heard or seen anything at Bree's house, nor had she gotten any new notes...it had actually been a relief. Shade had spent the days bouncing around Bree's backyard, chasing and being chased by Bree's youngest. She had visited the grief counselor, too. She hadn't told him about the more outrageous stuff, of course, but the story was hard enough in its bare bones, and he had been kind and comforting, given her a workbook on grief to work on, and a prescription for Xanax.

Bree leaned against the wall beside the door, dark skin contrasting sharply with the stuccoed wall, keeping an eye out. The guys she had recommended, the ones who had taken care of Diane's mysterious "problem", should be arriving any time now.

Bree leaned forward, peering down the street, then stepped away from the wall. "That's them, I think," she said, pointing.

A classic old black car, muscle car, came pulling in to the curb in front of the townhouse. The driver turned it off, and the loud sound of its motor faded away. The doors opened, and two youngish men clambered out, a tall, gangly, brownish-red haired guy from the driver's side, a blondish-brown-haired male model type, shorter, from the passenger side. The tall one went around to the trunk, opened it, grabbed a duffle bag, and closed it with a thud, while the other stood waiting and watching Jen and Bree.

They seemed...dangerous. Edgy. Their clothing was unremarkable--blue jeans and plaid shirts over T-shirts; they could have been any kind of contractors arriving to fix something. But it was the way they held themselves, the watchful wariness, the coiled energy and smoothness of their movements that gave them that appearance.

Not ordinary men, no.

They came up the pathway, and Jen and Bree moved forward to meet them.

The male model type held out a hand, and said, in a deep, rough voice, "Hey, there. I'm Dean Winchester, and this is my brother Sam. I understand you ladies might have a problem that we could help with?"

Bree moved to grasp his hand, brown eyes giving Dean a lingering once-over. "Well, hello, there," she said in a caressing voice. "I'm Bree, and this is Jen. It's her house with the problem." She held his hand a little longer than necessary.

Jen sighed softly. Joe was the love of Bree's life; they had been together for twenty years, since college, had three kids. But she was always on the prowl, quite happy to flirt with good looking guys, and this Dean Winchester definitely fit in that category. His hazel eyes appreciatively returned the once-over, sliding over her trim figure like a gentle hand. A small smile tugged at one corner of his lips. Obviously a guy who liked the ladies as much as Bree liked the men. 

Jen reached out her own hand. "Hi. I'm Jen Foster. Come on in." They shook, and she turned and unlocked the door. Her hands were shaking a little bit, she noticed.

The house had that oddly empty feel that houses get after being vacated for a few days, and she absently shook her head at the small amounts of dust she could see sparkling in the rays of sunlight coming down from the clerestory windows. She led them into the living room, and stopped with a gasp.

Bree bumped into her, then just stood looking over her shoulder, blinking.

"Honey...well...Someone's trying to get your attention, that's for sure."

Jen stepped further into the room, and the Winchester brothers followed, moving toward the fireplace. Sam dropped the duffle bag, and there was a long silence as they all scanned the room.

There were post-it notes scattered like confetti. On the coffee table, the sofa, the chairs, the hearth and mantle of the fireplace, even stuck to the glass on the family photos hanging on the wall in the hallway to the guest room.

"I take it this isn't your normal decor," Dean said, semi-humorously, an eyebrow cocking up. He leaned down to pick one of the notes up, looked it over, then handed it to his brother. Sam read it, then looked at Jen.

"Mom, please help. That's what it says."

Bree picked up another. "So does this one," she said.

Jen dropped down on the sofa with a sigh. She started collecting the nearest notes, mindlessly stacking them neatly, pressing them together so the sticky sides held them in place.

The air suddenly filled with the scattered yellow post-its. They flew through the air like a flock of little origami canaries, coalescing into a tidy little pile on the coffee table. A pen poised over the top, blank note and scribbled something. A foil-wrapped Hershey's kiss flew in from the entryway, landing on top of the pile of post-its like a peace offering.

Jen and Bree leaned forward to read the new note.

"U r so obsessively tidy, Mom!!! xoxo"

Jen said, softly, wonderingly, "Thea...?"

Bree leaned back against the sofa with a snort. "Oh, yeah, that's Thea, all right. Snarking at you because of the tidiness...? Yup."

Jen heard a metallic double clack, and looked up to see Sam tossing a shotgun to his brother and reaching into his duffle for another. Filled with abrupt anger, she ran to the nearest one, and beat at his chest with her fists.

"Guns?!? _Guns_?!? You want to _hurt_ her?!? My _daughter_?!? Not in _my_ house you aren't, dammit! Leave her _alone_!"

Dean very slowly, very carefully, put the shotgun down on the ottoman and raised his hands, palms out, defensively before his chest to block her fists. "Whoa, whoa, whoa...," he said calmly, looking down at her with gentle eyes. "Ms. Foster--Jen--". He paused, bit his lip, looked at his brother, and said, "Sam, a little help here...?"

Sam had also laid his shotgun back down on top of the duffle bag. He stepped forward and took Jen's hands in his. He was just huge, she thought absently; towering above her, broad shouldered. But she wasn't frightened, it was just quite noticeable, was all. He led her back to the sofa, sat her down, sat down next to her, her hands still sheltered in his long fingers. His eyes--what color were they? she wondered. In some light they were grey, then they shifted to light blue, then to pale green--were soft and sympathetic.

"Jen, you have to understand. This isn't Thea. Not anymore."

Jen bridled angrily. "You don't know--the notes--they are _so_ Thea--"

He sighed. "Jen, ghosts may start out just like the person you knew, you loved. But...being a ghost...it changes you. Ghosts are stuck." Like the notes said, Jen thought. "And after a while, sometimes a long time, sometimes very quickly, they...they...lose their humanity. They become angry, vengeful. And they usually focus their anger on people they loved. Because they can't get what they want, which is, I guess, getting...unstuck. And when a ghost turns vengeful...well. It's neither nice nor pretty."

Jen bit her lip, looking down at her hands wrapped in his.

"So we need to stop Thea. Help her. Find out what's keeping her here." He drew a breath, bracing himself. "The first thing it would be is her body. Where is she buried, Jen?"

Jen looked into his eyes helplessly, grieving again. "We...we...cremated her."

Bree rested a comforting hand on her shoulder, and nodded. "Scattered her ashes. Mount Diablo. It was a nice, cloudy day...so very pretty," she added softly, her eyes distant. Her fingers pressed into Jen's shoulder, then softened again.

Dean stepped forward briskly. "Okay, then, not the body. It's something here, then. Something of hers that's holding her here, something that has traces of her DNA, skin flakes, that kind of thing."

Sam spoke again. "Jen. Can we look through her room?"

She appreciated that. Him asking for permission. It was like he was handing control of the situation over to her, acknowledging it was her life that had been torn to shreds once and was being ravaged all over again. She looked up at him trustingly, nodded wordlessly, waved her hands toward the stairway.

"Upstairs. First door on the left."

He nodded back, then looked at Dean, gestured with his head to the stairs. He let go her hands, stood up, rested a hand on her shoulder for a fleeting second, then moved away. They headed up the stairs. Jen sat looking after them for a few moments, then stood up and followed them. Bree was close behind.

As they climbed the stairs, she could hear them talking.

"Dean...God, Dean, this is one of the hard ones..."

She heard rustling, footsteps moving around Thea's room, the sound of a photo frame being replaced on a table.

"Cute kid...Yeah, Sammy, I know. But even Bobby..." He paused, and Jen was startled to realize that his voice, normally matter-of-fact, was filled with emotion. "Even Bobby. He had years of experience, Sam, and even he couldn't stop it, couldn't control it."

Sam sighed. "Yeah. I know. But sometimes I wish we could give people who are hurting like she is...I wish we could give them good news."

Dean barked out a harsh laugh. "Hah. Yeah, right. But, hell, even if we were born-again evangelists, we couldn't give them good news! Angels...demons...God missing...!"

Jen and Bree stopped just inside the doorway. Dean and Sam turned to look at them, then Dean's eye was caught by something on Thea's bed.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing at the "chix rule" blanket. Jen darted forward to snatch it up, held it to her chest, folding her arms over it for protection.

"No!"

Bree frowned at the men. "That's Thea's baby blanket. She took it everywhere. Even after she became an oh-so-mature teenager...she took it to Girl Scout camp; some of the older girls laughed at her because of it. But most of them understood..."

Sam glanced at Dean, an eyebrow lifted in question. Dean nodded. He said, gently, "Jen. That's probably it. That's what's holding Thea here."

Jen dropped onto the bed, a tear slowly trickling down her cheek.

"No..."

"Yes." 

She looked down at the blanket in her lap, a finger slowly tracing the outline of a stylized yellow chicken on pink background. Her finger then moved to touch the different-sized yellow stars against lavender, stroked the well-worn fleece, flipped a corner over to the deep purple backing. She started talking slowly, lost in memory.

"Thea was six months old...she had pneumonia. So bad. They hospitalized her...she was so tiny. So sick. I had to hold her down so they could get the IV into her arm. She screamed." She glanced up, looking at Sam, then Dean, who kept silent. Bree sat down on the bed beside her and put an arm around her waist. "She was there for six days. My sister-in-law, Marie, she made this blanket in two days. Ben brought it to me. It was the only colorful thing in that room. Everything else was white, or brown. The crib--it was huge. And metal. Thea looked so lost in it."

Her fingers continued stroking the blanket.

"It was her favorite. Always. Just days before...before she died...we were snuggled on the sofa, watching The Avengers, and she had it wrapped around her. When Shade was just a puppy, he chewed a hole in it--here." She pointed to a spot where the fleece was noticeably brighter. "Thea cried for days, and turned her back on Shade whenever he begged for attention. Marie came to visit us and brought the remnants, so she could fix it."

By now, the tears were streaming down her face, dripping onto the blanket. She twisted her hand into the soft fleece folds, closed her eyes, drew a deep breath.

"No. No. Whatever else you need to do, do it. But not this. No."

Sam stepped forward, said softly, "Jen--"

He stopped abruptly. Bree jerked alert next to her, drew in a hissing breath. Dean muttered something, she couldn't understand it. The temperature plummeted. 

A cold hand rested on hers.

"Mom..."

She froze. She knew that voice, knew it like her own heart.

"Mom, I'm stuck. I can't get loose. It itches, mom. It's like...like...I dunno, drug withdrawal or something."

Her eyes flew open in automatic mom mode. "Dorothea Louise Foster! You'd better _not_ have any idea what withdrawal is like!"

And there she was, crouching in front of her, brown hair brushing across her shoulders, soft brown eyes looking into hers, tank top layered over sports bra, jean shorts, sneakers; she even still had a scrape on her knee from the soccer game a week before her death.

" _Mooooom_!" Thea rolled her eyes. "Jeez. Of course I don't do drugs, you know it! But I _do_ read, y'know! And we had D.A.R.E., over and over and _over_ again. We had to, like, talk to addicts and stuff, y'know."

Jen glared at her. Opened her lips to snap something out. Then reality struck her. She reached out a trembling hand to cup her daughter's cheek. It was cold. Icy cold.

"Thea...? Baby girl...?"

She smiled. "Hey, ma."

"Oh, Thea..."

A cold hand covered hers.

"Mom. You have to let them do...whatever it is...to the chix blankie. Please. Just...let me go. It hurts."

Thea's ghost was crying, too.

"I miss you, ma, so much. You know that. But I've gotta go. I can't stay. I get...so _angry_ now." The ghost looked down, bit her lip. Her hair fell across her face, and she pushed it back with a frustrated motion. It fell back down. "Mom, I'm so afraid I'm going to hurt someone. Aunt Bree. Shade. You. Please."

Jen pushed Thea's hair back, tucking it behind her ear with a pat.

"There, honey. You have to tuck it back behind the ear. How many times have I told you...?"

Thea pulled her head back, rolled her eyes again. " _Mom_! I'm being serious here!"

Bree snorted. "Hey, girlie. That didn't work with your mom before, it ain't gonna work now."

Thea grinned at her. "Hey, Aunt Bree! I know, I know. Maybe if you tell her, too...?"

Bree laid her hand on top of the one Jen still had clutched in the blanket. "Jen. Hon. Let the nice guys do it."

She looked up, looked at Sam, looked at Dean. Looked back at Thea's ghost. Her heart was breaking, all over again. She sighed, closed her eyes, held the blanket out towards Sam.

"Here. What do you have to do with it?"

Sam took it from her hands, slowly, reverently. He drew a deep breath, was about to speak, when Dean interrupted.

"We have to burn it, Jen. And soon. She--" he nodded his head towards Thea, whose form suddenly stuttered like bad reception on a TV screen. "She says she's getting angry. It's a bad sign."

"Burn it--?" Jen breathed.

"Yeah, ma. That...sounds right. We can do it downstairs, in the fireplace. Right?" Thea looked over at Sam and Dean questioningly. Dean gave a decisive nod. "Let's just do it now, mom. Get it over with. I can't stand watching you hurt like this. I wanna go. I want you to...to get on with life, stop...stop moping around. I'm gone, and there's nothing we can do about it anymore. So, like, get out there, meet another guy, have..." She stopped, then went on, "Have another kid, ma. You're young enough."

"No!"

"Well, goddamit, do _something_! Quit...quit...moldering!" Papers on her desk stirred, the glass of her mirror shattered, and a pillow slammed into Jen's head. Thea's form stuttered, vanished, then reappeared.

"Okay, that's it," Dean said crisply. "Downstairs to the fireplace we go. Now." He moved forward, making herding motions with his hands. "Let's move." Jen and Bree stood up, and they all trooped out of Thea's room, down the stairs, and into the living room.

Jen knelt beside the fireplace, turned on the gas, and pushed the ignition switch. The fire lit with a "whooomph!" She stared into the flames, not moving.

Sam knelt beside her and pushed the blanket into her hand. "Here. You do it." She took the blanket from him and started crying again. Thea was kneeling next to her on the other side. She put her hand over her mother's, guiding it toward the fire.

"Just do it, ma. Like Nike says." Jen gave a muffled laugh. They moved their hands together, and dropped the blanket on the grate. Flames licked around it, the edges curled and blackened, then flames appeared in one spot, then another. Jen looked at her daughter, cupped her cheek one last time. Thea smiled, and mouthed, "Love you, mom..."

"I love you, too, baby girl," Jen sobbed.

Then Thea's ghost form was glittering gold and red and blue from the feet, the spirit flames flew up her body, and then all that was left was a small blue-white light sparking towards the ceiling.

Then it, too, vanished.


End file.
